Your kids on-line can be fine

Dave Ryan has some good news for parents about the Internet: it’s a tool that can bring your child into contact with the whole world, and bring that world home.

He has some bad news too: the Internet is a tool that can bring your child into contact with the whole world, and bring that world home.

With a little help, parents can make the bad news a little better.

“Your number one protection is monitoring what your kids are doing,” Ryan recently told a small group of parents gathered at the Richards Memorial Library.

Place computers where you can monitor them, Ryan advises, not hidden in a child’s room. Talk to them about the dangers and what they should do if they encounter certain situations.

Get involved in their computer activities, helping them find sites to get information or for amusement.

And just as you’d be sure to know where your children are going and with whom, check where they’ve been on the Internet or with whom they’ve exchanged e-mail.

Ryan suggests basic safety rules that parents would probably teach their children in other situations: don’t talk to strangers, don’t give out personal information.

But when it comes to the Internet, e-mail and chat rooms, parents whose childhoods didn’t include these techno-wonders might not be emphasizing the rules, or even be aware that the same dangers apply.

“[The Internet] has opened up and exposed children to things our generation was never exposed to,” Ryan said.

Everyone on the Internet, in an e-mail or in a chat room, is a stranger, and never believe they are who they say they are, he said. Predators and con artists are experts at online monitoring and gathering personal data.

“Pedophiles have come into their glory days online, unfortunately,” he said. “Some of the most sophisticated computer users are pornographers.”

Like the stranger offering candy and leading a child to a waiting car, predators silently monitor chat rooms until they find a vulnerable child. That child might seem lonely or could give out personal information and enter an unmonitored one-on-one chat room — and might be on their way to becoming a victim. By posing as a child the same age, predators can easily fool children — and making seemingly innocent offers to meet and share toys, games or fun can be very tempting.

“There are a lot of ways to entice kids to respond,” Ryan said.

Beyond the worst-case scenario of a sexual predator or a child pornographer, there are other possible problems that kids might encounter.

It’s easy to unwittingly come across sexually explicit material, or material that is otherwise inappropriate: gambling, drug dealing, sites that promote violence, hate mongering or bigotry. How to build a bomb or hack into a network is information easily available at the touch of a key. Ryan recalled a time when giving a public speech one simple keystroke went awry and took a roomful of people directly to a pornographic site.

And it’s even easier if you’re looking for it, as a curious teenager might.

The possibilities are frightening.

But there’s always the good news: the medium can be managed and parental involvement and watchfulness can circumvent all but the most unpredictable incidents.

“I don’t want this class to be scaring people away from the Internet,” Ryan said. “It’s a wonderful tool. I just want you to use it safely.”

So do software manufacturers and parents’ organizations.

As fast as the illicit user comes up with ways to prey on the vulnerable, technology comes up with ways to give the control back to parents.

Firewalls, virus protection and Spam-blocking programs are sometimes included in software or features that don’t even require installation.

Many of those programs are constantly updated by their manufacturers to circumvent the efforts of others to get around them; those updates can also be automatically installed or purchased on a regular basis.

It might require a little technology savvy as well to keep operating systems up to date so that monitoring software is current as well.

Monitoring software that gives parents access to the record of what their children are doing may bring controversy into the household regarding a teenager’s desire for privacy. But safety, Ryan says, far outweighs the right to privacy.

Ryan urges parents to make a judgment about the amount of flak teens give parents about monitoring; excessive secretiveness might mean your child is involved in something they know they shouldn’t, a red flag any parent should pay attention to.

That attention is something no software tools can duplicate.

“They’re just tools to help you; they’re not the solution,” Ryan says. “You are the solution.”

Dave Ryan is Chief Information Officer at Southborough Medical Group; his talk at the Richards Memorial Library was sponsored by the Paxton Police Department. Parental resources on the Internet

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